Mommy Wars: Working vs Stay at Home Moms Part 400

This morning on my Facebook page, a dear friend posted a link of a letter a working mom wrote to her daughter (and to the world) in response to her daughter’s question: “do you love work more than you love my brother and me?” What a gut-wrenching question for a mom to answer. Of course, the mom answered that she loved her kids more than work, but her reasoning just adds some fuel to the working mom/stay at home mom battles.

Just so you know my bias: I am a mom that straddles the working mom/SAHM fence – I work part time, but I view my primary job as being a mother.

Sasha Emmoms, the mom and writer of this letter, talks about her passion for writing and how it feeds her soul. She talks about how after her children were born that she was torn about returning to work, but also grateful for a semblance of normalcy after the chaos a baby brings. She compares her love of writing to her daughter’s love of art and how happy it makes her feel.

Then she returns her daughter’s question with one of her own: what if I made you choose between your art and me? Hmm, potentially a great question – maybe not one for her 8 year old to answer, but still. She goes on to say to her daughter that she hopes “your love of creating doesn’t get sacrificed for the people you love, whether you make money from it or not.” As a writer and as a mom, I understand the need to create, and both aspects of my life demand it of me. The part “whether you make money from it or not” is interesting to me. Is she talking about a paid career creating, or just the fear of having to sacrifice your ability to be creative because you had children. Writers, in general, are a poorly paid lot. Writing feeds my soul far more than it feeds my children.

Then Emmoms goes through a list of reasons why she works, prefacing the list by saying that this is HER list and not any other’s list. A couple really resonated with me as they are also reasons I choose to work and a couple made me shake my head and think that she maybe she just doesn’t get stay at home moms at all.

“I work because I love it… I work because scratching the itch to create makes me happy, and that happiness bleeds over into every other area, including how patient and engaged and creative mother I am.”

These two reasons I completely can embrace. I’m fortunate enough to have the choice to work and I choose to do it because it makes me happy and a better person.

“I work because this nice house and those gymnastics lessons and those sneakers you need to have are all made possible by two incomes.”

Notice the part about how it is her child’s “need” for gymnastic lessons and sneakers that are part of the answer to her child’s question. Given that reason, maybe a better question Emmoms should have asked her daughter is this, “If you had to choose between gymnastic classes and nice sneakers or me at home, which would you choose?”

“I work because even at your young age you’ve absorbed the subtle message that women’s work is less important and valuable—and that the moms who really love their kids don’t do it. “

I understand the context in which she places this statement: you don’t ask your father this question so why is his career more important than mine? However, I suspect that context is her own and not her daughter’s.

What I think is interesting about this reason she gives is that she is essentially minimizing the powerful and different role mothers have in their children’s lives – the mere fact that for the majority of kids, the first person they ever bonded with, during pregnancy and post partum, was their mother. The biological difference between mothers and fathers is probably why her daughter asks that question of her and not her husband. We are their first nurturers and it starts before our children are even born. There is a reason that when injured in war soldiers often cry out for their mothers and not their fathers.

How she used women’s work is also disturbing to some, myself included. Are my day-to-day parenting tasks also not “women’s work”? I’m not talking about gender norms here, but the fact that part of THIS woman’s work is full-time parenting. I wonder if she isn’t subtly giving her daughter the message that those women who’s job is to be a SAHM aren’t as important and valuable as her career as a writer.

I’m grateful that my friend posted this letter despite not agreeing with a good chunk of it. Perhaps I’m a bit envious of this woman who is trying to have it all, I don’t know. There is a tiny bit of me who is also a sad for her daughter too that she is asking this question – that she feels the need to make sure her mother loves her more than her job.

My only disagreement is with the extent to which she is actually minimizing staying at home. To a certain extent maybe it's almost impossible to justify one choice without at least implicitly undermining another, but I do think she is trying to do the former not the latter.

I think the focus on her use of "work" might be a little harsh. Namely because this article also uses "work" the same way. If the title of the piece sets "working" off against "staying at home" then it feels a little unfair to look askance at the Mom for referring to women "working" as "women's work."

And I'm not sure that we have any way to distinguish the biological from the social reasons that a wounded soldier cries out for his or her mom. That said, I can't disagree with the rest of that paragraph. The relationship is different. I'm around more with our son than my wife is since she went back to work, but he definitely sees her as First Nurturer, and not just chronologically.

I see both sides of the sahm/working mom coin and I'm grateful I have found a balance that works for me and my family. I just wish those firmly entrenched on both sides would stop the disdain they have for the others decision.

TurdHurdlerApril 19, 2013 at 1:28 pm

Exactly! And for many it really isn't even a choice but is necessitated by their financial situation.

The opposite can be true as well. When my kids were really suffering from the symptoms of autism and they were each getting 30 hours a week of services that I had to cart them around to, there was no way I could have worked. At that point, my kids needed me too much. Sure, I wasn't as self-fulfilled at that time, but there is a time and a place for everything.

Having it all? Awfully hard to have it all at the same time. I'm shooting for over the course of my lifetime.

TurdHurdlerApril 19, 2013 at 1:47 pm

Right. When you have special needs children, all bets are off. When my kids were really small, I literally couldn't have afforded to go back to work, as childcare costs more here than I have ever made in my life. Now that they are both in school, I can teach classes during the day or in the evening when my husband is home. I think Oprah was right when she said that you can have it all, just not all at the same time.

TurdHurdlerApril 19, 2013 at 1:11 pm

This reminds me of the time that I took my kids to my old campus for the first time and I ran into my old advisor. He asked, "So, are you working?" I said "Yes, I'm a full-time Mom." I got a blank look in return. That said, I'm grateful that I am able to teach part-time now. I feel that it gives me a creative outlet that brings me more creativity to offer my boys.

mommareaMarch 25, 2015 at 12:49 pm

Are my day-to-day parenting tasks also not “women’s work”? Why do they have to be specified as "women's work". The tasks you do as a SAHM are your work. A stay at home dad would be doing the same work.

What the author is referring to is that society continues to behave as if it is ONLY the mother's responsibility to stay at home and raise the kids and the fathers are expected to go to work and "make a living".

Why does it have to be women expected to stay home and men expected to go to work? Why is this dynamic what society sees as "normal" or standard?